The Washington Post says we’re “the masters of PACER.” Politico notes we’re a “renowned expert at scouring unsealed court filings for overlooked news.” CBS remarked that we are “credited for discovering some of the most high-profile indictments of our time that could have very easily been overlooked.” The Columbia Journalism Review posits that our “research and investigative work has repeatedly broken news that the press would have otherwise missed.” Even the Justice Department concedes we’re ‘well-known PACER watcher[s].”
We appreciate the praise, but let’s put it more succinctly: we are very good at what we do. In hushed tones we may even argue that we’re the best in the world at it. And while our expertise makes for boring dinner conversation, it is a valuable skill to have at a time where people are desperately seeking someone to provide verifiable facts instead of online slop. Using more than a decade of experience with the U.S. courts system, we have a keen understanding of the 94 federal districts, how they file documents, and how to find the seemingly unfindable in the byzantine court records system. It’s also why hundreds of journalists a year seek our counsel for their news stories, and how we routinely break national news on our site.
And we’ll let you in on a little secret: because the PACER paywall makes mass accessing court filings comically cost-prohibitive, no A.I. system can replace our research methods. Only dedicated expertise can find the right court documents in a sea of filings.
Which is why we’re happy to announce the newest initiative, The Research Desk. It was built on a simple premise: the most interesting stories in America are sitting in federal court dockets. The Research Desk allows us to put our expertise to work for your organization through records training, docket monitoring, and custom research.
Records Training
We offer specialized training for newsrooms, law firms, financial institutions, non-profits, and research organizations on how to navigate the convoluted world of federal court records. Years of daily work inside PACER and RECAP have taught us where the system's gaps are and how to exploit them to surface new cases and filings before anyone else knows they exist.
Organizations we've trained include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Reuters, CNN, ProPublica, USA Today, CBS News, ABC News, and FoxNews.
Continuous Monitoring And Databases
Need eyes on a specific issue, industry, or defendant? We provide ongoing docket monitoring using a combination of manual and automated processes refined over years of practice. Our method identifies new federal court records and trends that matter to your organization, and often faster than the alerts you're paying for now.
Past monitoring engagements include:
Identifying new federal money-laundering cases for a financial due diligence firm
Monitoring ongoing and new court cases involving artists and celebrities for a major music magazine
Real-time updates on new federal cases for an nongovernmental organization tracking wildlife smuggling in the United States
Tracking ongoing hacking criminal cases for a cybersecurity company
Custom Research
Have a question buried somewhere in the federal docket? We build structured datasets, track case categories across districts, and verify claims against primary court documents. We’re happy to tailor our expertise to your project idea.
Get in Touch
Interested in training, monitoring, or custom research? Drop us an email here.